The 16th-century Spanish explorer and conquistador Hernando de Soto c. In , while leading an expedition in search of gold, he sighted The story of North American exploration spans an entire millennium and involves a wide array of European powers and uniquely American characters.
Sir Francis Drake participated in some of the earliest English slaving voyages to Africa and earned a reputation for his privateering, or piracy, against Spanish ships and possessions. History Early HistoryAnthropological In , Coronado led a major Spanish expedition Amerigo Vespucci was an Italian-born merchant and explorer who took part in early voyages to the New World on behalf of Spain around the late 15th century. By that time, the Vikings had established settlements in present-day North America as early as 1, A.
In search of fame and fortune, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan c. En route he discovered what is now known as the Strait of Magellan and became the Live TV. The logs of both Columbus and Ponce de Leon contain evidence that the Taino Indians in the islands and the Calusa in Florida had knowledge of the sophisticated Maya civilization on the Yucatan Peck : ; Peck : 4.
An early German engraving of Juan Ponce de Leon with his signature. The engraving was possibly made from a sixteenth-century family portrait, since lost. The three vessels shown here are typical of the vessels used by Ponce de Leon on his voyage. The two caravels are on the left side and the bergantina is on the right. There is no mention of seeking the fountain of youth or slaves, but the patent contained detailed instructions for accountability of the gold that he was expected to find in this wealthy new land.
The title of Adelantado was a vast improvement in power, prestige, and potential wealth over that of a governor. Gold was certainly one of the lesser goals of the voyage, and perhaps the principal interest of the crown, but Ponce de Leon was already an extremely wealthy conquistador and his plantations well supplied with slaves.
His fleet consisted of two caravels, well provisioned for a long voyage, and one small bergantina for exploring shallow inlets and harbors Figure 2. His pilot was Anton de Alaminos, the most experienced pilot in the Indies, who was later to serve as pilot to Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba , Juan de Grijalva , and Hernan Cortes in the discovery of Mexico Nueva Espana.
Alaminos would have learned only dead reckoning and pilotage from Columbus, since this is all that is needed for accurate navigation in the islands. LXXXI, 2, , pp. This impressive and expensive expedition was entirely financed by Ponce de Leon as he expected the goal of becoming the Adelantado of a wealthy new land would fully repay his efforts and investment. In the accounts of this extensive preparation there is no mention of the existence or interest in a fountain of youth.
But this allegation is not supported by valid historical evidence. An examination of the fountain of youth myth in European literature and folklore reveals how and why this was a natural, though misguided, chain of events. The miraculous waters known as the fountain of youth is a Eurasian myth that can be found in the folklore of most ethnic cultures in Europe and the Middle East. The earliest record of a fountain of youth is in the Arabic epic romance of Alexander the Great, known throughout the medieval world from Libya to Syria.
The myth of the fountain of youth appears to have originated solely in the Arabic lands of the Middle-East, as the Christian Bible and the early Greek and Roman literature contains no reference to such a magical fountain. This French account of Alexander finding the magical fountain of youth reads in part :. The old warriors entered the fountain; more than forty-six bathed in it and when they came out they were age thirty and like the best knights.
See how old and bent we are? We have lived more than a hundred years and now you will see us in another guise. They left the fountain rejoicing, and when they returned to Alexander he could hardly recognize them, so young they were" Armstrong : The wonders of Asia and the Middle East and its folklore to include the fountain of youth were also spread throughout Europe in the anonymous and apocryphal Letter of Prester John, which first appeared in , and was republished in many versions during the Middle Ages Wright The early published Letter, told of a legendary Christian Prince, who lived in an area generally associated with Ethiopia or the Far East.
A 13th century elaboration of the Letter reports that: "The miraculous spring is located on an island in the extreme meridian of the world, where long-lived people drew from its waters lasting health and renewal of youth" Wright : Placing the "miraculous spring" or fountain of youth "on an island in the extreme meridian of the world" would point to the islands of the New World discovered by Columbus.
The fountain of youth appears in different accounts as a fountain, river, spring, or miraculous and rejuvenating waters. The fountain is primarily associated with sensual, erotic love, and either drinking or bathing in the waters could restore youthful sexual performance lost with age. And this is a powerful force for keeping an apocryphal myth alive, as witness the current multimillion dollar business of selling aphrodisiacs based entirely on myth.
There were other Eurasian myths, such as Amazon warriors and the Seven Cities of Cibola, that were transplanted to the New World as unfounded romantic fiction by historians and writers of the early sixteenth-century. Amazon warriors first appeared in Greek mythology when Herodotus in BC reported fierce warrior women called Amazons living in an area north of the Black Sea Davis-Kimball : Marco Polo placed the realm of the Amazons in an island of the Indian Ocean, and the Arab geographer Al-Idrisi circa located the Amazons on an island in the Atlantic Marsden ; Lunde : On three occasions in his log January 6, 15 and 16, Columbus reported the Indians told him of a nearby island inhabited only by women.
In other log entries, the Indians stated the name of the island was Matinino and it lay somewhere east of Espanola Dunn-Kelley : ,,, Columbus, who was well read in the early Greek and Arab classics and Marco Polo was quick to interpret the island of "Matinino" as an island of Amazons.
And later , Juan de Grijalva reported that, "the Yucatan was an island inhabited only by women, believed to be of the race of the Amazons" Wagner : It was this same propensity exhibited by Columbus and Grijalva to believe that Amazons were present in the New World, which led other Spanish explorers and historians to believe that the alleged fountain of youth was also to be found in the New World.
Another Eurasian myth transported to the New World was the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola sought by Coronado, but of these several European myths and legends, that were believed to exist in the New World, it is only the fountain of youth that has been associated with the Ponce de Leon voyage.
Peter Martyr, was a learned Spanish court entrepreneur and historian who made it a point to question all the early explorers in order to write his commentary and history of the Indies published in his Decades de Orbe Nova.
Martyr would certainly have questioned Ponce de Leon at the time of his return to Spain and to the court in following his discovery voyage. In his account of the voyage of Juan de Solis, Martyr stated : " Beyond Veragua the coast bends in a northerly direction, to a point opposite the Pillars of Hercules; that is, if we accept our measures certain lands discovered by the Spaniards, more than three hundred and twenty-five leagues from the north coast of Hispaniola.
Amongst these countries is an island called by us Boinca [later Boyuca], and by others Aganeo; it is celebrated for a spring whose waters restore youth to old men" McNutt : In a note on this page, McNutt states that the "countries" referred to is Florida, but Solis at this time was on the coast of Honduras and more than miles from Florida. Martyr does not give a precise geographical location for the fountain spring on Boinca Boyuca or Ananeo, but from the navigational data given it is clear that it was in the Bay of Honduras which Solis visited after leaving Veragua , rather than the Bahamas or Florida.
The distance given of leagues from Espanola is more than nautical miles, which approximates the distance to the Bay of Honduras in the Solis voyage, rather than the Bahamas or Florida which are less than nautical miles about 60 leagues from Espanola. The length of the Spanish league is in contention among Columbian scholars and varies from 2.
The most commonly accepted figure continued after the map. Bimini is the modern name for a small island in northwestern Bahamas opposite Miami that has no valid geographical relationship to the islands or land of "Beniny" or "Beimeni" sought by Ponce de Leon.
In his seven months long voyage through the Bahamas with Indian guides, Ponce de Leon identified twelve islands, none of which bore the name of Boinca, Boyuca, or Ananeo, the islands named by Martyr as the location of the fountain of youth. Figure 4 shows the track of Juan Ponce through the Bahamas plotted from the navigational data in the log. The chart shows seven islands that Alaminos and the Indian guides identified on the north-bound passage and five more were identified on the return passage through the same general area.
The detailed entries in the log describing the islands contains no hint concerning a possible fountain of youth.. Much later, Martyr gave an apocryphal and patently fictitious account of a fountain of youth relayed to him by Fernando Figueroa who stated : "A Lucayan servant [slave] called Andreas, says that when his father was broken by age, he left his native island near Florida, attracted by the report of the power of that spring and the hope of prolonging his life.
He set out for the desired spring, where he made a stay of some time, drinking, and following the treatment indicated by the bathers. He returned home strengthened and with his manhood renewed, for he married again and had sons.
This later and unrelated report by Martyr of another fountain of youth, this time in Florida, was again made with no mention or association with the voyage of Ponce de Leon. The next historian to mention the fountain was Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo in his Historia General, published in Oviedo was the official chronicler for the Casa de Contratacin de Indias in Seville and traveled extensively in the New World to write his official history.
For an extract translation of this comment, see Morison : Another overlooked and unreported, but significant factor is that Juan Ponce took his mistress, Juana Jimenez, along on the voyage Peck : ; : And it should also be noted that Ponce de Leon had sired four children from his wife Leonor during this period in which Oviedo suggests he was seeking a cure for his impotence.
A primary factor that supported the legend that Ponce de Leon was seeking a fountain of youth was the mistaken belief that he was an old man at the time of his voyage. Samuel Eliot Morison in was the first to document that Ponce de Leon was born in and was only 39 years old on his discovery voyage Morison : Before , the historians most often cited as authorities on the subject Scisco ; Davis ; Lawson ; Olschki carried Ponce de Leon in his 50's which lent a false credence to his alleged search for a fountain of youth.
In fact both Oviedo and later Herrera made it clear but without foundation that Ponce de Leon was vainly seeking the fountain for his own personal use. Yet the latest account by the respected Florida historian, Robert Fuson, follows other Florida historians and alleges that Ponce de Leon was seeking the fountain of youth for the aging Ferdinand Fuson : However, Oviedo was the official historian appointed by the crown, so his tendentious and unfounded remark has been regarded as authentic which insured that succeeding historians faithfully copied, and embellished this falsehood in all subsequent histories down to the present time.
Following Oviedo by nearly three decades is the Spanish historian, Francisco Lopez de Gomara, who was the next to mention the fountain of youth in the New World Gomara ; Weddle : Gomara reported that both the fountain of youth and Amazon women were in existence on the island of Guanahani in the Bahamas. Fontaneda was shipwrecked on the Florida Keys about Fontaneda asserted in his memoirs that it was the Jordan River in southern Florida that Ponce de Leon was looking for in order to "earn greater fame or become young from bathing in such a stream.
There never was a "Jordan River" in southern Florida and there is no indication that Ponce de Leon was looking for it. There was however a Jordan River on the coast of South Carolina associated with the exploration of the east coast organized by Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon. This river, named Jordan because it was discovered on the feast day of John the Baptist, was probably known to Fontaneda when he wrote his memoirs. Herrera is the source of the erroneous idea that the river was named for a crew member lost while exploring the river Herrera : III, Not realizing he was on the mainland of North America, he thought he had landed on another island.
He named the region Florida meaning "flowery" , in reference to its lush floral vegetation and because he discovered it at Easter time, which Spaniards referred to as Pascua Florida "feast of flowers". In addition, he was not the first European to explore the area. Spanish expeditions had raided the Bahamas on a regular basis for years prior, and there is evidence that some made it as far as the east coast of Florida.
A neighboring tribe of Caribs had burned the settlement to the ground and killed several Spaniards. His own house was destroyed and his family had narrowly escaped death. The Spanish crown also ordered him to organize a small army to subdue a native uprising on Puerto Rico that had continued in his absence. He left Spain with a small fleet in May Historical accounts of his encounters with the Caribs on Puerto Rico are vague, but it seems there was a series of military engagements with no clear outcome.
He stayed there for two years, until he finally received assurances that his financial empire was secure and returned to Puerto Rico. Records are scarce, but some accounts describe a poorly organized trip. The expedition landed somewhere on the western side of the Florida peninsula, where it was soon attacked by Calusa warriors.
The expedition sailed back to Cuba, where he died in July
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